I lost my father this week.
More precisely, he passed away yesterday after a brief battle with cancer.
And despite the heartache and pain and void I feel after an emotionally draining and gut-wrenching few weeks, my mind keeps drifting back to sports.
Because that was the bond that tied my father and I together.
As the youngest of five children—and the only boy—I didn’t share long heartwarming talks with my Dad. He came from a generation where the father provided and the mother nurtured. My father and I didn’t talk about sex. We didn’t share secrets about money. A phone conversation with my Dad started with this familiar phrase: "I’ll get your mother."
What we had in common was sports.
From the time I was very young, I was hooked on baseball, a generational gene passed on from father to son. My Dad would spend his Sundays with my mom’s brother, hopping on the train to New York City after Mass and taking in a Giants game at the Polo Grounds.
He was a National League fan, so when the team moved to San Francisco it broke his heart. Like so many other jilted Giant fans, he happily jumped on bo...
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